When Cassia gets home from work, she makes use of her alone time to look at her microcard on the kitchen port, a screen that watches the family at all times.

She is one of the best sorters and rarely makes mistakes.

By vocation, Cassia is a data sorter, a person who finds patterns in various data streams and sorts it categorically. The flakes turn out to be Cottonwood seeds from a nearby grove, which is being torn up to make room for more efficient trees. The next day, on the train to work, Cassia and the other passengers are bewildered by what appears to be snow in June. Cassia has a younger brother named Bram, and when they arrive home, he teases her about being Matched with Xander. On the ride home, they hold hands for the first time. When it is Cassia’s turn, she is Matched to Xander, to her elation.Ĭassia and Xander are given standard microcards, which contain extensive information on each of them so that they can learn about their life partner. They are displayed to one another on a screen when they are Matched. At the Banquet, an extravagant spectacle with lavish food and drink, 17-year-olds in attendance are to be Matched with their life partners, most of whom are attending their own Banquets in other Cities. Each citizen is allowed exactly one such artifact. She holds a golden compact, her artifact, which was a gift from her grandfather. At that point, following a ceremonious Final Banquet, they die a scheduled death.Īt the book’s opening, Cassia Maria Reyes is on her way to her own Matching Banquet at City Hall with her best friend, Xander Carrow. At age 17, each citizen enjoys a Matching Banquet in their honor, where they are paired for life with an assigned partner, with whom they will marry, have children, and grow to age 80 together. People eat the pre-approved meals delivered by the government. Every citizen has one job - cooks do not learn about biology and data sorters do not partake in nutrition disposal. One hundred of the “best” poems, paintings, songs, and stories are all that remains of the culture we know today, preserved so as to give everyone just enough information to not be overwhelmed. Nobody can write, or draw, or create anything that does not already exist. In the Society, everything for the citizens is decided by the government: where they work who they love when they die all of it is scheduled and planned based on statistics and probabilities that guarantee them the best possible life.

Matched ally